Hosted by the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit

Summary: After a brief recap of the principles of Mendelian Randomisation (MR), I will show several extensions of this method to different settings/assumption: (i) In-depth quantification and correction of the bias of the most popular MR method (IVW); (ii) estimation of non-linear causal effects; (iii) adaptation of MR to elucidate phenotypes playing a key role in mate choice and couple convergence. Finally, I will conclude the talk with some examples of MR applications to molecular phenotypes.

Biography: Zoltán Kutalik is a statistical geneticist, associate professor at the University of Lausanne, heading the Statistical Genetics Group and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Exeter. His main research interest lies in developing statistical methods integrating various omics data in order to better understand the genetic architecture of complex human diseases. He is a council member of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), scientific programme committee member of the ESHG (2019-2023), EMGM (2020), BC2 (2019-), ISCB (2020) conferences and evaluation committee member of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Zoltan is on the advisory board of the LongITools EU project, science council member of the Health 2030 Genome Center, an editorial board member of PLoS Genetics, Human Molecular Genetics and EJHG. He won the Early Career Bioinformatician Award of the SIB, the Investigator-in-training award of the University of Lausanne and shared the Leenaards Prize. He published over 200 peer-reviewed articles (~47,000 citations, h-index >91) in international scientific journals (incl. Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Genetics and Nature Communications). His research has been financed by the SNSF, the SIB, the SystemsX.ch and the Leenaards Foundation.

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